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the greatest value. Special bibliographies are valuable in inverse ratio to their length—a complete list of works on Egyptology, for instance, is hardly more valuable to the ordinary small library than a full, unclassified list of books in-print on all subjects.

      The majority of the small library’s purchases are books as currently issued. For these the Publishers’ weekly is indispensable. Some librarians prefer to look at every book before purchasing, and arrange with publishers or booksellers to send large numbers of books weekly or even daily on approval. This, if there is sufficient time, is a good plan, but it is certainly wasteful. There are many books which we can surely reject or accept from the author and title entry in the Publishers’ weekly as well as if the actual book were in hand. If a mistake is made it will be, or should be, discovered as soon as the book is received, and the volume can then be exchanged. Only the doubtful books need be asked for on approval, and these will generally be found to constitute a relatively small percentage of the whole.

      The data on which the librarian may rely to accept or reject from a mere list of books are: 1) the author’s name; 2) the title, with such brief annotation as may follow it; 3) notices in the book magazines; 4) the publisher’s name. The author stands for much—the style, method of treatment, the fitness to print of what he has to say, the readableness of his book, and so on. We all know that there are authors whom we can absolutely rely on in these respects, either for acceptance or rejection. It is thus necessary that the librarian may know the uniformly good author and the uniformly bad ones; but experience must be his guide, as this lies somewhat without the scope of the present paper. The title should tell us something about the contents of the book, but, unfortunately, the aim of the title-maker is too often not to give information but to stimulate curiosity. In some cases this is carried so far that the title of a book leaves us in absolute ignorance as to whether it is sociology, travel, or fiction. One is, therefore, generally obliged to refer to some kind of descriptive note to get the desired information. Such notes are often appended to lists and the librarian does well to remember that they are generally not intended to be critical. For criticism we must go to the reviews, and here I have always felt, and still feel, that the librarian has a real grievance. The book periodicals are many, and every daily paper has its critical page. This mass of matter is made accessible through the recently issued Index to books reviewed. Yet with it all there is not one place where the librarian may look for brief notes on current books, telling him just what he wants to know and no more, and with the confidence that the information is quite free from bias. In saying this I am quite ready to give credit to our best book reviews for their many good qualities. What I mean is, that the reviews are written for the reader or the bookseller, never for the librarian. In making use of those at his disposal the librarian must learn to discriminate, to weigh authorities, and to pick out the occasional sharp needle of valuable criticism from the haystack of discursive talk.

      Lastly, the selector may rely on the name of the publisher. This may tell him much or little, but it may at any rate guarantee good paper and type, and it may also assure him that the book contains no improprieties. Unfortunately, it cannot insure against dullness—publisher’s readers are but mortal, and the best will occasionally reject a pearl and take in a pebble.

      When all is said and done, of course the intelligent man who has read a book carefully knows more about it than he could have found out by reading all the annotations and reviews in the world. The librarian of a small library can read every book under consideration. The head of a large library cannot do this; the larger his daily or weekly order, the more he must rely on the recommendations and opinions of others, and even the books that he orders on approval he cannot read himself.

      Here, perhaps, is the place to note that not every librarian is his own selector. The responsible decision in these matters rests, of course, in most libraries, with a committee of some sort; but if the librarian is one in whose judgment this committee has confidence (and no other should hold the position at all) he will have a practically free hand. For decision in regard to doubtful books, especially current fiction, some libraries have special reading committees, often composed of ladies, but it can hardly be said that the results arrived at in this way are satisfactory. It is vastly better for the librarian to select a few persons, either on his staff or outside of it, on whom he can rely to give him information, after reading a book, on specific points regarding which he may require it. Especially in considering current fiction should the reader be able to distinguish between mere outspokenness, such as we find in the Bible or Shakespeare, and immoral or degrading tendency. The ordinary woman reader, especially the young woman, will often condemn a book for frankness when its tendency is decidedly good, and pass a clever, pleasant tale whose influence on many persons is bad, though conveyed entirely by indirection. Of course the librarian or the committee may make a general rule to exclude frankness, which, personally, I think is a mistake, though I am free to acknowledge that there are boundaries beyond which even a well-meaning writer should not be allowed to go.

      Of course, I can say but a word here on the trash question in fiction. But be not, I pray, too stern a censor. When selecting for a free public library judge books largely by their fruits. If a story sends a boy out with a pistol to play robber—somewhat too much in earnest—it is surely bad; if it makes him love justice and incline to pity, it cannot be altogether out of place in a library though it may be unreal and inane. Its characters may be wooden puppets to you, while to the young reader they are heroes, full of the divine qualities of courage, sympathy, and tenderness. As the reader thinketh so is the book—not as you, wise critic, in your plentitude of knowledge, would have it to be.

      The third consideration that must govern us in our choice, though I have put it last, is really the controlling one. Unless there is something in the treasury we may choose books all day, and our selection is as unavailing as the street child’s choice of jewels in a shop window; and the more money one has at one’s disposal, the easier it is to spend it. I must speak of the library’s finances here, however, only as they affect the librarian’s choice of books. Given a specified book appropriation, the librarian must often have to decide upon the best way to spend it, and upon the proper distribution of expenditure over the year.

      All these things influence his choice more or less. From one point of view it seems well to expend the greater part of the amount as soon as it becomes available, especially if a large number of pressing needs have been waiting for satisfaction. The trouble is that one cannot foresee what needs will also press for satisfaction during the coming year. Another plan is to distribute the expenditure pretty evenly without making any too strict rule in the matter.

      With the first arrangement the librarian will be apt to buy a good many of the larger and more expensive works—and, perhaps, be sorry for it afterward. With the latter he will purchase more current literature and satisfy his readers better, though the general quality of his purchases may not be so high.

      Perhaps a compromise may bring the best results. He who decides at the outset what reference works he can afford to buy during the year, and how much he must spend at once on replacements and duplicates, and after deducting these fixed charges from his appropriation divides the remainder into weekly or monthly portions for current purchases, will not go far wrong.

      To the financial section of this discussion belongs also the question of editions. Shall the librarian choose the best or the cheapest? Which is the best and which is the cheapest for his purpose? In the first place, we may exclude the extremes. Editions de luxe have no place in the ordinary free library, and, on the other hand, we should not think of offering to a self-respecting reader books printed on bad paper with worse type, simply because they can be purchased at a phenomenally low figure. But between these two there are many grades of beauty and durability. Here, as elsewhere, there is safety in the golden mean. As far as bindings of exceptional durability go, the question of paying extra for them depends on the use that is to be made of the book. If it will circulate so little that the ordinary binding will last twenty years, why spend money for anything stronger? Again, if it get such hard treatment that it must be replaced in a year’s time, why put on it a binding that would outlive ten years of such vicissitudes? Still again, with current books of popular interest, the library cannot wait to have them put into special bindings, but for standard, popular works, which will have steady but not hard use, and which can be ordered three months before

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